1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a meter-rate billing system on a LAN system. More particularly, it relates to a meter-rate billing system for reducing a traffic load of traffics on a billing procedure in which billing is performed according to an active time period during which an application service is received.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a LAN (local area network) system, when performing a billing procedure, an exclusive device is prepared to capture logs of all packets flowing on a network and to make billing possible by calculating the captured logs.
There have been employed two billing procedures, one procedure charging according to a data amount and, the other procedure charging according to an active time period during which an application service is received. In the billing procedure according to the data amount, a data size of a packet transmitted and received for each terminal is accumulated to obtain a total data amount. In the other billing procedure according to the active time period during which an application service is received, a time stamp of each packet is employed.
Additionally, in a meter-rate billing system according to an active time period on a system using a DHCP, i.e., Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, for dynamically assigning IP addresses, a DHCP server should be prepared. The DHCP server assigns an IP address out from those pooled by the DHCP server according to a request transmitted from a personal computer on each subscriber side.
When a subscriber finishes receiving a service, a message informing the end of the service is transmitted from the personal computer to a DHCP server on a center. The DHCP server records a time period from the time of assigning an IP address to the time of receiving a message informing the end of the service to make billing possible.
However, there have been some problems in the above-explained billing systems. In a system for capturing logs, it is required to prepare an exclusive device for capturing logs. Further, a large volume of logs has to be processed, and then a billing procedure is burdened with a heavy load.
On the other hand, a meter-rate billing method on a system using the above described DHCP, IP address assignment, and data transmission and reception are required between a DHCP server on a center side and a personal computer of each subscriber, when finishing receiving the application service. Therefore, it is indispensable to increase traffics.
In addition, a personal computer requests to assign an IP address when a power is On. Therefore, although an application service using a LAN is not received, a subscriber is billed. When using a WWW access, the unutilized times of a network actually, for example, while the subscriber reads the contents of a home page, becomes subject to be billed. Therefore, the meter-rate billing method may not be considered as accuracy.